In an op-ed, Nomad Writer Brianna Patt speaks on the role of comedy and radical joy in Black culture.
Most people have heard the idiom, “a barrel of laughs,” a way to express how funny something is. How a stand up special, or tv show has us keeling over. But, how many of us know what the origins of the phrase are? It is believed that slaves were not allowed to laugh on the plantation. So, slaves would stick their heads into barrels that were present to hide their laughter.
The Barrel reads: Because many enslaved African Americans were closely watched, they could not express their emotions openly. One creative solution to this problem was for the individual to place their head in a barrel, and then laugh with delight—all out of the overseer’s earshot. Based on this history, the “laughing barrel” has come to represent the repository of African American humor and the distinctive combination of suppression, resistance, and transcendence that marks African American culture.”| Photo Courtesy of the Black Youth Project
Black joy, and in turn Black humor serve as an act of resistance.
In “Wit and Humor in the Slave Narratives,” author Daryl Dance cites the specific example of John Little, a former slave who escaped to freedom in 1841. Little recounts how, in spite of the circumstances, slaves continued to laugh and joke in an effort to maintain their spirit.
“They say slaves are happy, because they laugh, and are merry. I myself and three or four others, have received two hundred lashes in the day, amid had our feet in fetters; yet at night, we would sing and dance, and make others laugh at the rattling of our chains. Happy men we must have been! We did it to keep down trouble, and to keep our hearts from being completely broken: that is as true as the gospel! Just look at it,–must not we have been very happy? Yet I have done it myself-I have cut capers in chains, “ Little said.
These roots have been crucial in the basis for Black Humor for centuries now. A darkness underlying a joke. The subject of the joke itself may have shifted, but taking a source of trauma and finding a way to laugh it off is key to preservation in many ways. An example of this is abolitionist and writer Fredrick Douglass recounting a time when he was so hungry he took food from his master, justifying it on the pretense that this was merely a transfer of property.
“A question of removal—the taking his meat out of one tub and putting it in another; the ownership of the meat was not affected by the transaction. At first he owned it in the tub, and last he owned it in me,” Douglass stated.
There’s also a joke by comedian Tony Rock about the “Blackness Scale,” discussing how one’s “Blackness,” may vary depending on who they’re speaking to. For instance, if you’re speaking to a manager, you’ll dial it back, if you’re driving home alone, it goes up. You code switch, because your job, and even your life could depend on how palatable you seem.
Tony Rock during a stand up special | Photo Courtesy of Improv
“Indeed the paradox of Negro humor is that in the background there is always the grim and harsh reality of Black life in America, but like Little the Black man has been able to laugh,” Dance states. “As he probes his bleeding wound-to laugh instead of succumb to utter despair and defeat. Thus his humor has been compensatory. His anguish. has left him no alternative but to laugh or cry.”
In 2015, a group of 11 Black women, a part of the same book club, got onto a Napa wine train. After complaints about how loudly they were laughing, they were kicked off the train, to be met with officers. This incident was labeled as #laughingwhileblack, an addition to a list of seemingly innocuous acts that Black people worry they are penalized for. Cops have been called on Black people for laughing, for birdwatching, for being in an apartment building visiting a friend.
While humor and joy don’t present as drastic, the response to it proves otherwise. Cops being called on Black people for birdwatching, for literally just laughing. The concept of a community growing, persevering and learning despite constant oppression is upsetting. That joy as an act of resistance is important to maintaining a sense of autonomy. Adrienne Waheed, author of the photo book Black Joy and Resistance stated that since Black people were enslaved in the US, what freedom we had has been reigned in.
“The reason that joy and resistance pair so well is because as Black folks, we have been resisting all our lives. Ever since we were brought to the US and enslaved, our lives have been subjugated and our freedoms have been regulated,” Waheed states to Vogue. “They’re always trying to quiet us down, turn us down. They tell us ‘you’re too loud’ or ‘you’re too bright’. However, those things are attached to our joy, our very being, and it is how we exist as full humans.”
